At Easter, 1548, a new communion service in English took the place of the mass.(1291) At the election of the mayor on the following Michaelmas-day, on which occasion a mass had always been celebrated at the Guildhall Chapel since the time of Whitington, an endeavour appears to have been made by the Court of Aldermen to effect a compromise between mass and communion, for whilst it ordered that a mass of the Holy Ghost should be solemnly sung in English in the Guildhall Chapel (which had been confiscated by Henry VIII)(1292) as theretofore, it further ordered that the holy communion should be administered to two or three of the priests there at the same mass.(1293) Orders were issued by the king’s council that candles should no longer be carried about on Candlemas-day, ashes on Ash Wednesday, palms on Palm Sunday. These practices were now considered superstitious, as also was the "sensyng" which hitherto had taken place in St. Paul’s at Whitsuntide, but which the Court of Aldermen now decreed to be abolished, and the preaching of sermons substituted in its place.(1294) (M668) The people were at this time extremely distracted by the various and contradictory opinions of their preachers; and as they were totally incapable of judging of the force of arguments adduced on one side or the other, but conceived that everything spoken from the pulpit was of equal authority, great confusion and perplexity of mind ensued. In order to "tune the pulpits" and to effect uniformity of doctrine and service, the Lord Protector resorted to proclamations, which, although no longer having the authority of statutes as in the reign of Henry VIII, practically answered the same purpose. Preaching was thus restricted to those who had previously obtained a licence from the king, his visitors, the archbishop of Canterbury, or the bishop of the diocese.(1295) The same want of uniformity which appeared in the preachers appeared also in their congregations; some "kepte holy day and manny kepte none, but dyd worke opynly, and in some churches servys and some none, soche was the devysyon."(1296) (M669)